The US carrier Verizon appears to be gathering personal data on its clients and selling it to advertisers. Wired and Forbes have claimed that the two largest mobile phone carriers in the United States, Verizon and AT&T, are adding the tracking number to their subscribers' Internet activity, even when users opt out

Howver the data can be used by any site to build a dossier about a person's behaviour on mobile devices including which apps they use, what sites they visit and for how long. MoPub, acquired by Twitter in 2013, bills itself as the "world's largest mobile ad exchange." It uses Verizon's tag to track and target mobile users for ads, according to instructions for software developers posted on its website. AT&T insists its actions are part of a test. Verizon says it does not sell information about the demographics of people who have opted out.

However it appears Verizon is service, called Precision Market Insights, has become popular among ad tracking companies that specialise in building profiles' of user behaviour and creating customised ads for those users. Companies that buy the Verizon service can ask Verizon for additional information about the people whose unique identifiers they observe. An executive from an ad tracking company Run told an industry trade publication that his outfit was excited about how carrier level ID, lets him track with certainty when a user, who is connected to a given carrier, moves from an app to a mobile Web landing page.

In addition, in a promotional video for Verizon's service, ad executive Chris Smith at Turn, touted "the accuracy of the data," that the company receives from Verizon. Advertisers who don't pay Verizon for additional information still receive the identifier only Verizon changes the identifier to make sure that an outsider can’t build a profile. Vodafone, a British telecom, admitted it inserts a similar identifier into some mobile traffic but it was not by default and the outfit did not routinely share information with the websites our customers visit.

ProPublica found a handful of Vodafone identifiers in its logs of website visitors and more than two thirds of AT&T and Verizon visitors to ProPublica's website contained mobile identifiers.

There seems to be no way to opt out either. Google has proposed a new Internet protocol called SPDY that would prevent these types of header injections. Of course, the US telecom companies are lobbying against it and this probably explains why.

The US tech press is one of the most tame in the world, frequently rolling over for the big companies that it reports. However it seems that Verizon does not think it is tame enough and so it is starting up its own news site.

Dubbed SugarString.com, the publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, and claims it is going to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge.

SugarString.com is only being bankrolled by Verizon but in exchange for the dosh tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world.

This would mean that when the Edward Snowden leaks showed that Verizon gave the National Security Agency (NSA) all of its customers’ phone records, this particularly news source would not report it.

Verizon gave the NSA landline phone records without customer consent or a warrant. Just this week, it was revealed that Verizon is tracking all of its wireless customers movement throughout the Web, so don’t expect that sort of reporting either.

Verizon is behind the moves to kill net neutrality so we can understand it would want that particularly story not being covered.

SugarString reporters are allowed to write, and have already written about, spying in other countries. They are allowed to slam the Chinese for their surveillance. What they have to do is reassure Americans that they are superior and are not being spied on.

In the good old days no journalist would actually work under such conditions. The US trade press lowered the bar considerably over the last decade – even to the point of actively campaigning for some companies. Now it seems that they have gone the full Orwellian hog and sold out completely.

We heard a quite interesting story that led to Verizon's acquisition of Intel TV. Despite the fact that the project was ready to be showed to editors and that a few thousand people took part in internal testing, the new management decided to sell this division to Verizon.

Apparently the technology was mature and ready to launch and even the deals with content providers and TV networks were in place. Intel's new CEO Brian Krzanich and President Renee James, the duo that took the helm from Paul Otellini. Following tradition, the new CEO decided to kill off the old CEO's personal projects. Intel TV was Ottelini’s baby, his pet project, and it had to go down with him.

Verizon benefits from this internal fight as it gets rather promising TV technology. We do understand the Krzanich's scepticism, as even mighty Google has failed to transform the TV market with Google TV. Intel is a chip company and never had much success in media. Krzanich, an operations guy who likes to run fabs and sell chips, failed to understand that content is king, getting into the game sometimes tends to be a huge gamble.

Intel OnCue (that was the official name of Intel TV ed.) is now in the capable hands of Verizon and let’s hope we will see the products based on it very soon. In effort to become a player in internet based TV, Verizon acquired EdgeCast last December. EdgeCast is an industry leader in content delivery networks.

Erik Huggers , the chap that came to build Intel OnCue, was a corporate vice president and general manager of Intel Media.

He said: "We're incredibly proud of what we've achieved. Intel provided us with the technological know-how and resources to develop products and services that will fundamentally change the way we experience TV, and now Verizon gives us access to the marketplace and the ability to scale. It's the next logical step, and we're excited about the road ahead."

It is an uncertain road ahead but it might lead to some sort of success.

AMD has been given a foot in the door into data centre land after Verizon gave the outfit street cred by using its SeaMicro servers to build out several data centres. SeaMicro pioneered a category of servers with a sea of low power, simple computing cores. AMD acquired SeaMicro last year for $334 million, and the Verizon deal means that AMD is getting a big payoff from that deal.

Kevin Clark, director of cloud platform engineering at Verizon, said his company still use a variety of computing architectures for its data centres. However the SeaMicro servers will be used on its new global cloud platform, Verizon Cloud, and cloud-based object storage service.

He claimed SeaMicro would solve many of the problems of cloud flexibility. SeaMicro used Intel Atom chips before AMD acquired it, and it still offers several models with Atom chips. But the new SeaMicro servers pack frugal AMD cores.

While the WiFi version of the Google Chromebook Pixel has been already selling for quite some time, the LTE version was AWOL, at least until now.

Google Play store has been updated and the LTE version of the Google Chromebook Pixel will be shipping to US customers by April 8th. Of course, all good things come with a price and in the case of the Chromebook Pixel LTE the price is set at $1,449, or US $150 more than the WiFi-only version. Bear in mind that the LTE version also has 64GB or double the amount of local storage and also gets 100MB of free data per month on Verzion's LTE network.

The Google Chromebook Pixel sounds pretty good but at that price there are a lot of other options to go for.

Carrol County police’s search for a 62-year-old turned into somewhat of a humanitarian feat as Sheriff Williams ended up paying $20 for a man’s phone bill before being able to use the cell signal to locate him.

Apparently, Verizon’s operator refused to connect the signal unless the Sheriff was willing to chip in for the bill. After some discussion, Sheriff Williams gave in and “funded” the search, finding the unconscious man.

It's always nice to see telcos care the same as banks and insurance companies. Brings tears to our eyes, really.

On Tuesday, PCWorld published a new report in which it ran an exhaustive comparative benchmark among fourth-generation wireless carriers in the United States. In its “2012 Mobile Speed Test," the site came to discover that AT&T’s 4G LTE service features the fastest download speeds around, Verizon’s 4G LTE network provides the fastest upload speeds and T-Mobile's 3.5G HSPA+ network provides the fastest average download and upload speeds for its respective network technology.

Image source: PCWorld

In terms of its testing methodology, PCWorld ran a total of 177,000 "timed performance wireless bandwidth measurements" on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon in 260 locations spread among 13 US cities of both urban and suburban environments. "We found some clear winners and losers, and some good news about wireless service in the United States as a whole." The first major discovery is that all four major wireless carriers, as a group (or should we say "as an oligopoly"), have increased their average download speeds for laptop-modem users by more than threefold, likely stemming from their urgent transition from 3G to 4G network technologies.

Image source: PCWorld

Image source: PCWorld

The report also discovered that AT&T's 3.5G HSPA+ network delivers 4G-like results, but the growth of the company's data speeds is slowing. More or less, the AT&T's speed increases over the past two years can be attributed to software upgrades and infrastructure improvements. "AT&T completed a networkwide upgrade to HSPA 7.2 technology in late 2009, then announced earlier this year that it had finished another upgrade to HSPA+ technology, which it says allows for maximum theoretical download speeds up to 14.4 mbps. AT&T also has been investing large amounts of capital in fiber-optic lines for the movement of cellular data to and from the core of its network.

PCWorld's full and comprehensive 4G network performance review for Q1 2012 can be found here.

The Wall Street Journalreports this morning that Verizon Wireless will attempt to expand its fourth-generation LTE network in the United States by including 10 million more Americans than previously expected by year's end. In other words, the nation's largest wireless carrier intends to double its LTE markets from 200 million Americans in 196 markets to nearly 260 million Americans in 400 markets by the end of 2012.

David Small, Verizon's chief technical officer, noted that if Verizon's executive management can sucessfully coordinate the company's ambitions to its year-end goal, Alaska would be the only state without LTE service by that time. Meanwhile, analysts have noted that the company has poured billions of dollars into building out and facilitating growth of its fourth-generation LTE network, but has only managed to draw 5-percent of its customers to the faster network. But when compared to AT&T's 4G LTE coverage map of just 74 million Americans in 28 markets, many believe Verizon has plenty of leverage to go around for at least the remainder of 2012, if not the first two quarters of 2013.

Verizon's reasoning to launch shared family data plans stems from its desire to get more users transitioned to its newer, less-congested 4G LTE network, which only 5-percent of its customers have switched to since its initial nationwide launch in December 2010.

“It is very critical for us, and we’re playing a very delicate balancing act here that I don’t want to spend any more money on my 3G network,” said Verizon CFO Fran Shammo at an investor conference Monday. In other words, the company seeks to reduce congestion on its CDMA 3G network by bundling together multiple family members on a single data plan, while at the same time handing out promotions to current 4G LTE customers by offering them 2x their current data allowances at half price.

In response to a question about the timeframe for shared data plans on Verizon, Shammo answered "you'll see something launched midyear this year from us."

In perspective, Verizon's top executives insist that the company doesn’t want to spend any more money on its 3G network, however, and it will instead focus solely on 4G LTE. Shared family data plans are one way to alleviate 3G spending costs.

As many financial analysts in the information technology industry know, Apple is the biggest holder of both credible and uncredible rumors regarding any company's product line in the history of personal computing. The amount of rumors that manifest themselves on the edges of the Internet surrounding Apple's plans are undoubtedly some of the most discussed, debated and hated topics that make the Web the world it is today.

Nevertheless, the latest source of Apple rumors comes from Bloomberg, citing "three people familiar with Apple's [iPad 3] plans." According to the information, Apple's third-generation tablet model is expected to feature a quad-core ARM Cortex processor, a Retina Display similar the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, and a 4G LTE radio compatible with both AT&T and Verizon's next-generation wireless networks.

Bloomberg's unnamed sources at Apple claim that the company's manufacturing partners in Asia have started ramping up production of third-generation iPad components in January 2012 and plan to reach full volume production by February 2012. According to other reports, many analysts expected the company to formally announce its third-generation iPad hardware sometime in the first quarter of this year. However, recent news from Apple has put an end to the iPad announcement rumors, as the company will host an education-centered publishing event next week, January 19th, in New York City.

Because of the recent announcement, it is impossible to confirm whether Apple will announce new iPad hardware in the first quarter of 2012, and analysts have already begun restructuring their forecasts according to other rumors that have perpetrated the Web recenty.

We look forward to discovering more credible information regarding third-generation iPad components directly from manufacturers overseas in the near future. In the meantime, the projected hardware information can be taken with a grain of salt.